Institute For The Future

Future of Persuasion: Core research questions

Here are the core research questions we'll be asking over the next five months.  

1. What are the new directions of change in persuasive tech? 

In particular, we will track RT data/activity streams, modeling/simulation, augmented reality, video, haptic interfaces, mobile supercomputing with the cloud, and the cognitive web. 

2. What are the new directions of change in the science and art of persuasion?  We'll look at behavioral psychology and economics, social networking, design thinking, neuroscience, and game theory.

3. How is what we are persuading for changing?

What new values and norms will emerge over the next decade that could change what we want to be persuaded about, or how others want to persuade us?  These could be as large as the concept of sustainability, or more narrow, such as the emergence of new parenting norms in the U.S.

4. How are the agents of persuasion changing? 

The crowd and the individual are both agents gaining the power to persuade.  How will this change over the next decade and what will the new agents be?

5. How is persuasive power being redistributed? 

Who is likely to gain more persuasive power, and who to lose it, over next decade? 

6. What might be new obstacles to persuasion? 

7. Finally, what are the implications of these changes for 5 important domains of persuasion in the next decade?  Learning, Marketing/Advertising, Working/Belonging to an organization, Health, and Governance/Politics.